Global positioning systems (GPS) have used 3D trilateration in the past to locate a target. Physical GPS systems have used a minimum of 4 satellites to ascertain longitude, latitude and attitude (3D trilateration). Such systems have been useful for determining the location of a target based on the intersection of various vectors.
Systems have tried to utilize real world trilateration methods to locate a network device. See, e.g., U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0010367, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0101277, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,436,870, 6,947,978, which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. One previous system utilized commands such as network trace routes or pinging commands to ascertain network latency between a test device and a target device. See U.S. Pat. No. 6,804,624, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Another previous system required the use of JavaScript code running on a target's browser to ascertain the latency. See U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0005394, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The problem with using such techniques as described by prior systems is that various network devices or servers may not be configured to respond to various commands (such as ping), or may not have a requisite application, such as JavaScript, installed in its browser. Thus, such intrusive methods of determining network latency may not work unless the various components of the system are configured to accept the various commands.
Thus, a need exists for a system or method of locating a network device using a non-intrusive technique that may be applied universally without requiring specific configurations or applications at different network components.